


and the ghosts (they own everything)

by theprincessandtheking



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Eventual Smut, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Porn With Plot, Post-Season 4, Slow Burn, bunker? what bunker?, canon season 5 does not exist, eligius is whatever tf i want it to be, idk her sorry, mentions of braven, so many feelings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-06
Updated: 2019-04-29
Packaged: 2019-05-03 04:04:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 21,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14560470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theprincessandtheking/pseuds/theprincessandtheking
Summary: Bellamy didn't believe in ghosts.He loved the stories as a kid, of course, of wrongful floatings and Mecha Station accidents that left behind a groaning that wasn't just the Ark’s ancient machinery. He’d loved the way every creak of metal sounded of screams for hours after his mother’s voice had gone silent, loved the way adrenaline coursed in his veins until it finally gave way to exhaustion, lulling him to sleep over the drone of the engines.No, he didn't believe in ghosts, but that was the only explanation for the person kneeling over him, sunshine tendrils falling around both of their faces.“Clarke?”





	1. my coming home

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this before season 5 promos aired and I have not altered my plot in any way since. So we’re just going to pretend like season 5 thus far does not exist. Braven sort of a thing instead of Becho, Eligius is whatever I want them to be, the bunker is basically irrelevant. Consider it how I think the beginning of season 5 should have gone. Use your imagination.

Bellamy didn't believe in ghosts. 

He loved the stories as a kid, of course, of wrongful floatings and Mecha Station accidents that left behind a groaning that wasn't just the Ark’s ancient machinery. He’d loved the way every creak of metal sounded of screams for hours after his mother’s voice had gone silent, loved the way adrenaline coursed in his veins until it finally gave way to exhaustion, lulling him to sleep over the drone of the engines. 

He remembers the way O would pull the blankets up to her high cheekbones as he retold the haunting tales their mother had told him. He knew them well, knew how to put that certain lilt in his voice to chill his sister's bones.

Those stories had echoed in his ears from the moment they had returned to the Ark, this time with an edge that couldn’t be dulled, a personal haunting that clung to his skin and weighed his steps until his lungs fought for air. He saw her ghost everywhere. He saw it in the eyes that looked to him for decisions, wide with fear and a note of pity that never failed to make his stomach sink. He saw it in the unopened bottle that sat perched on the ledge of a window that revealed a burning earth for six years. He saw it in the golden sunlight that glinted off the metal of the corridors, and for a moment he could swear it might have been a peek of her hair as she turned the corner in front of him.

Bellamy didn't believe in ghosts, but that was the only explanation for the person kneeling over him, sunshine tendrils falling around both of their faces.

“Clarke?”

 

— _Two Hours Earlier—_

 

Humming. God, he was sick of humming.

He missed the silence of the woods as he snuck out before dawn to bathe in the river before the dropship sprung to life for the day. The silence that made his steps feel less like a death march every time he made his way on the newest mission from Arkadia.

On the Ark, everything is always humming. The electricity that sparks in the lighting system, the ventilation system, the heating ducts as they try to counter the icy emptiness outside of the metal walls. It drowns the thoughts play on a loop in his head, hushes the _what if_ s, muzzles the _should have_ s. It blankets her eyes, her hair, stifles the brightness of her smile that gets a little dimmer in his memory every day.

So maybe the humming isn’t always so bad.

But sometimes, when the moon has already lit up the corridors and everyone else is asleep, he goes to the one place the humming can never seem to reach.

Sometimes the silence is necessary, even when it hurts.

His eyes flicker over the fading lines that have engraved themselves upon his soul. He found this place a few weeks after they arrived on the Ark while they were searching for scrap metal for Raven to use. He’d stopped in his tracks.

 

 

_“Did you draw this?” He examined the map in his hands, eying the detailed corridors of Mount Weather and perfectly to-scale tunnels that etched their way across the paper._

_Clarke nodded._

_“Sorry,” she said, “I didn’t have time to grab the real one they gave us before Anya and I escaped.”_

_“No. This is great.”_

_She pressed her lips together and gave him a small nod, and though she tried not to show it, he could tell his praise pleased her._

_“A hobby of yours?” he pressed._

_“Used to be. My dad taught me when I was a kid. Kept me entertained while I was in solitary.”_

_Bellamy flinched. Down here, constantly surrounded by teenage delinquents and now the ever-present activity in Camp Jaha, he sometimes forgot that she’d spent a year with no human contact other than the occasional guard inspection. He searched her eyes, seeking a sign of the loneliness he knows she must have faced._

_“Don’t look at me like that.” Her stare had hardened like a challenge, showing no chinks in her armor._

_“Like what?” he asked softly._

_“Like I’m broken.”_

_He shook his head with a small smile. “I don’t think anything could break you, Clarke.”_

_She eyed him cautiously, her gaze softening as she seemed to find sincerity in his expression._

_“It wasn’t so bad,” she said. “Seemed like my cell was the only place on the Ark that was actually quiet enough to think.”_

_He watched as she traced her finger along the grain of the wooden table in front of them, face guarded with memories of the time she’d spent separated from everyone she cared about. He didn’t say anything more about it, knew she didn’t want him to. Instead he shifted his gaze back to the page in his hands._

_“Maybe someday you’ll get to draw something more than a war map.”_

 

 

He feels the tension give way in his shoulders as he takes in the familiar landscapes that adorn the walls, grateful for the hands that he knows put them there. His fingertips unconsciously graze the lines of the charcoal that cover the floor, and he knows without looking that they will come away stained black by the touch.

The cell become somewhat of a sanctuary for Bellamy over the last six years, a place he can turn to when the walls of his quarters seem to close in around him or the burdens of leading his friends rest a little too heavily on his shoulders. It turns out she’d been right. This room is the only place on the Ark where the humming doesn’t reach. The only place he feels like he can breathe.

The others don’t ask why he comes here so often. Maybe they already know.

A soft knock on the cell door tears him from the stillness.

“It’s time,” Monty says.

Bellamy nods and hoists himself to his feet. He allows himself one last glance around the room, but the drawings are as embedded in him as the scars that cover his skin. He says a silent goodbye to the world she’s drawn for him as he turns to face the one he must return to.

It feels like another goodbye to her.

The others are already suited up when he and Monty arrive, and the tension in the air is palpable as they gather what little belongings they’ve accumulated over the last six years. It’s unspoken, he knows, the understanding that there’s no way of knowing how this launch will go. Raven has used what few materials were available to them to build some semblance of a ship, forged from old radiators and tech boards that they’d gradually learned to live without.

It had taken longer than they’d planned to finish, with Raven demanding to run more simulations and analysis to ensure it would survive re-entry into the atmosphere, to design the parachute deployment system that would have to be released at the exact right time to ensure they’d land at a survivable speed.

Raven is already at the launch door, pacing across the small corridor as she mutters words so quickly he can’t make them out. She stops when she sees them.

“Took you long enough,” she says. She turns to Bellamy. “You good?”

He feels the eyes of everyone on him. They know what it means, for him to return to the ground. He sees the pity on their faces, the understanding that he knows she won’t be there to greet them when they land. Earth without her. It’s unfathomable.

Even so, he nods.

“Good.” Raven glances across the group. “You all know the plan, helmets on, straps as tight as you can manage.” Her eyes scan the faces of the group. “The landing’s going to be rough.”

“A water landing would have given us better odds,” Emori grumbles.

“You try making an automated door strong enough to open against 70,000 pounds of pressure in the water using only the scraps on this piece of crap station, and then say that to me again. We’d have never even gotten the door open.”

The silence that follows is a heavy one.

“I gave you the choice,” she reminds them. “We drown or we die on impact. You chose the quicker option, so that’s what we’re doing.”

Bellamy steps toward her and puts a hand on her shoulder. He dips his head to meet her gaze, and she lifts her chin and sets her jaw challengingly.

“We know you did what you could, Raven,” he says. “We took our time to give us the best chance we could, and if _you_ built it and say it’s safe, I’m on board.” He turns to the others. “We prepare for the worst as a precaution, like always. But the parachute will deploy, we’ll land smoothly, a few bumps and scratches, and that’s the end of it.” He eyes Emori. “You don’t like it, you can always stay here.”

She rolls her eyes from the corner of the room as she shoves her helmet beneath her arm.

“Alright,” Raven says. “Let’s go home.”

* * *

 

It’s one of those days when the planet feels too still, like the world has finally stopped turning and the only thing left moving is the wind in the branches above them. It’s quiet. The kind of quiet that sends fear up Clarke’s spine as she remembers they’re not alone in Eden anymore.

“It’s hot today,” Madi says from her perch on the rover’s hood beside her. “Can we go swimming later?”

Clarke considers it for a moment.

“Maybe,” she concedes. “We’ll have to see what the day brings.”

The rover needs to charge after two days of thunderstorms have stolen much of its energy stores. Some days, when there are no animals to be found to hunt or nothing that needs repairing around camp—a rare thing, she admits—they come to the lookout point and enjoy the morning before they make their daily radio transmission. Today the metal of the hood is warm on their backs as they stare up at the sky, the surrounding trees swaying in the slight breeze that cools their skin against the sun’s rays.

"I think it'd be nice to be like that,” Madi says thoughtfully. “Like the leaves on the trees." Her eyes trail upward to the fluttering greenery above them, the sunlight bright against her fair skin. "To be able to go wherever the wind takes you, without having to stay in the green.”

The wistfulness in her expression tugs at Clarke's insides, and she thinks for the hundredth time that someone so young shouldn't know so much about Earth's cruelty. 

"But the leaves eventually die," Clarke says. "They lose their roots, and soon they just wither away.” She looks at Madi and gives her a gentle nudge. “People are like that, too, you know. You lose your roots, the one thing keeping you going, and eventually you lose yourself along with it."

She tries not to think of Bellamy. It doesn't work. 

“Alright,” she says after a moment, “enough lounging, we’ve got things to do if you want another lesson tomorrow.”

Madi groans but obliges, sliding off the hood of the rover with a soft thud as her feet hit the earth. She sets to work unloading the radio from the back of the rover and begins to haul it to the spot that seems to have the clearest signal at the edge of the lookout point.

In their spare time, she’s been teaching Madi to draw. She shows her how to make the charcoal, the paints, then how to lay it down on the pages. She doesn’t have the natural ability for it that Clarke had received from her father, but she loves it, and the more she practices the better she gets. It makes Clarke proud.

Making her own charcoal had been tricky to figure out. Her dad had taught her the basics, to heat the charcoal without letting the air get to it until it turns black and powdery. Eventually she’d discovered that the radiation suit she’d worn the day she’d been left on the ground was fireproof (that was a discovery she didn’t care to relive), and had used the material to make a pouch for the twigs as they sat over the flame. It got the job done, so long as Praimfaya didn’t come back again. Honestly, at this point if it did she wouldn’t be surprised.

She unwraps the charcoal she’d roasted yesterday and sets it gently to the side as she pulls out a mortar and pestle from her pack. The bushel of flowers Madi had collected that morning for paint is still intact, and Clarke delicately plucks the remaining petals from their stems and places them into the bowl. As she grinds, Madi toys with the radio, turning knobs in the hope of finding Eligius’s channel so that maybe they can have a fighting chance.

Clarke isn’t an idiot. She knows that two people and a handful of rifles will never be enough to stop the hoards of people that were unloaded from the prisoner transport ship two days ago. Aside from the guns she saw in a few of the guards’ hands, she doesn’t know how heavily armed they are or if they even know that Clarke and Madi are here.

They’ve tried to lay low since the ship arrived, only lighting fires under the cover of daylight, sticking to the bows and arrows Madi taught her to shoot for hunting to avoid the sounds of gunfire. It’s taking its toll, though. She’s never been good with a bow, and their food stores are dwindling rapidly. She mentally curses herself for not stockpiling more when she’d had the chance.

“Clarke!” Madi shouts from the radio.

Clarke starts to shush her, a reminder that they must stay hidden, until static starts pouring from the radio with a voice beginning to break through the noise. She feels her pulse quicken. Madi shifts to allow Clarke room to adjust the dials, and soon most of the static has cleared enough to hear the shouts of the transmission.

“—repeat: this is Ark 1, traveling to the ground!” Clarke knows that voice, panicked and sharp through the background noise of the speakers that have gone unused for six years. “Mayday, mayday, anyone out there, our chute had a delayed opening and optimal landing speed is unreachable. I repeat: mayday—”

More static breaks over the air, and Clarke sees the awe and fear on Madi’s face. She sees it then, the flash of the red parachute streaming just over the tree line, attached to a black metal structure no larger than two rovers. It’s moving fast, too fast. Just as it disappears beyond the trees she hears Raven’s voice break through the noise, shrill and desperate.

“Brace for impact!”

The line goes dead, and static overtakes the radio once more. Clarke turns to Madi, her eyes wide and uncertain as she looks to her for instructions.

“Let’s go,” Clarke barks, the charcoal and paints forgotten in the middle of the clearing. She and Madi each grab the radio off of the boulder, hauling the heavy box of metal across the clearing to the rover. Clarke helps her load it into the back of the vehicle and slams the gate behind her as she darts to the driver’s seat. She turns the key, praying that it’s had enough time to charge in the sun and releasing a breath she didn’t know she was holding when the engine turns over.

She floors it.

“It’s them, isn’t it?” Madi asks. She nods. “What happened? Why was she yelling?”

“They were supposed to aim for the water,” Clarke says with a shake of her head. “Something must have happened upon re-entry to the atmosphere—the parachute didn’t deploy when it was supposed to.”

The terrain is rough at this speed, jostling them from side to side as the guns clank together in the back of the rover.

“What does that mean? They crashed?” Madi’s eyes bore into her from the corner of her vision. “Are they going to be okay?”

“I don’t know, Madi,” she says quietly. “But we have to get there before Eligius finds them.” 

Clarke isn’t sure if they heard Raven’s transmission, but she knows there’s no way they missed the bright red parachute streaking across the sky. If they didn’t know they weren’t alone before, they do now.

They’d known before they went to space that the trip back to Earth would be a rocky one. She remembers Raven saying the only way to ensure the safety of everyone on board would be with a water landing. But the ship had come down nowhere near Becca’s lake, and at the speed it was progressing toward the trees, she knew that whatever had happened on landing, it wasn’t going to be good.

Clarke swallows hard, shoving down the lump in her throat. Whatever had just happened, at least one of them was alive. Raven was _alive_. And by the size of the ship she’d built, Clarke doubted that she was the only one. She forces herself not to get her hopes up, tells herself to see what the damage is before she allows herself to think that maybe he’s with her, too.

Though the drive isn’t a long one, it feels like it takes hours. They’re forced to circle back a few times after searching the area the ship was heading and coming up empty-handed. On their third round, Madi points out her window.

“Look! There!”

Clarke makes a sharp turn toward the break in the trees Madi points at, the contents of the rover shifting violently and clattering as she dodges trees and accelerates over the rocky forest floor.

She sees it then, the flash of red of the torn parachute beyond the trees. Splinters of the trees surrounding the newly created clearing are everywhere, dozens of them snapped as the ship came down. Clarke shifts the rover into park as she gets to the edge of the damage and jumps from the driver’s seat, slamming the door behind her.

“Get the med kit!” she calls to Madi.

She sprints ahead toward the ship in the middle of the clearing, now nothing more than a shredded chunk of metal. Her heart is in her throat as she locates the door on the other side, gripping it and pulling as hard as she can. It shifts open slightly, but slams shut before she can get it to catch.

Mad catches up to her and sets the med kit to the side, taking the other corner of the door.

“One, two, _three_.”

They pull as hard as they can, throwing their weight into it until the door opens with a sickening groan. Their breathing is heavy and Clarke’s hands shake as she poises herself at the entrance, bracing herself for what she’s about to see.

As her eyes adjust to the darkness within the ship, her eyes skim the interior, and they are _here_ , seven of them, and miraculously appear to be intact and mostly uninjured. Though his helmet is still on, she finds him without thinking and is at his side in an instant. She tugs it over his head as gently as she can.

His eyes are closed, blood streaming from a cut at his temple and coating the side of his cheek. His curls are sticky with it as she brushes them back from his face, older but still just as she remembered.

“Bellamy,” she breathes.

He isn’t moving, and panic curls in Clarke’s stomach as she fumbles with the helmet and places her fingers over his pulse point. And then she feels his heartbeat beneath it, fast, but still strong and steady. She lets out a breath she didn’t know she was holding.

He stirs at her touch, forehead creasing and eyes fluttering and suddenly his eyes are locked on hers for the first time in years.

“Clarke?”

A noise breaks from her throat, somewhere between laughter and a sob, as she cradles his cheek in her palm.

“You’re late.”

His eyes dart across her face, disbelieving and confused as she presses on his abdomen to check for more injuries. He flinches at a few tender spots, but apart from some nasty bruises and maybe some stitches for the cut on his forehead, he’ll be okay. The realization stills the trembles in her hands and soothes the dryness in her mouth. He’ll be okay.

“I don’t understand,” he rasps. His eyes never leave her face, as though reassuring himself that he’s not just imagining her. “You’re alive. How—”

“I promise you I will explain everything as soon as I can, but first we have to get you all out of here. _Now_.”

Madi is tending to a particularly nasty cut on Harper’s upper arm, the others all regaining consciousness around them and removing their helmets. It’s Raven that sees her first.

“Holy shit,” she moans. “Am I dead? I must be dead if you’re here.”

Clarke laughs as she grabs a bandage from the med kit.

“You’re not dead,” she tells her. “But welcome back to Hell.”

Bellamy winces as she presses the gauze over his cut to staunch the bleeding until they can get back to their camp.

“Hey, assholes,” Raven barks, “wake up. We’ve got company.”

The others groan as they awaken, Murphy swearing loudly as he sits up and rubs at the back of his head. His eyes lock on Clarke’s and she gives him a small smile.

“Oh my god,” Harper whispers. The ship is silent. “She made it.”

And suddenly the ship is alive with celebratory whoops and shouts, and Monty has unstrapped himself from his seat and trapped her in the biggest hug she’s had in six years. As the others gather around her and stand, she catches Bellamy’s gaze at the edge of the pack, eyes heavy with fatigue and his head injury. His grin is radiant anyway, even as a tear slips down his cheek.

“Believe me, you have no idea how good it is to see you guys, but we have to get out of here,” she says, slipping through the group and making her way to the door. “I’ll explain later, but for now everyone needs to come with me.”

Madi joins her at her side, and Clarke places a hand on her shoulder.

“This is Madi,” she tells them. “Madi, this is everyone.”

“Hi, everyone,” she echoes with a wry grin.

“Follow her to the rover. We’ll take you back to camp.”

Everyone seems relatively unscathed as they trail out the door after Madi, if a bit unsteady from the rough landing. Bellamy seems to have gotten the worst of it, and Clarke has to grip his shoulders as he sways dangerously on his feet.

“Hey,” she eases, “you’re okay.” She tosses his arm over her shoulder and slips her hand around his waist to steady him as she guides him slowly to the rover. She tries to keep him talking, if only to distract herself from the feeling of having Bellamy so close to her after all this time. “We’ll get you patched up in no time.”

Despite his best efforts, he leans heavily on her.

“You’re alive,” he repeats. “I can’t believe you’re alive.”

She chuckles at the way he looks at her from over his shoulder, his expression unmasked and almost childlike with the daze she has no doubt he’s feeling.

“Guess you were right to hold out hope for that nightblood solution,” she answers.

He huffs incredulously, another tear slipping down his cheek as they reach the back of the rover. Murphy offers him a hand and helps her ease Bellamy into the back as Madi reappears at her side.

“You good to drive?” Clarke asks. “I want to check everyone out, make sure we didn’t miss anything.”

Madi nods. Clarke climbs into the back of the rover, and Madi shuts the door behind her, giving a dramatic double tap on the door to signal that everyone’s inside.

“You know,” she says as Madi climbs into the driver’s seat, “you don’t have to do that if you’re the driver that’s waiting for the signal.”

Madi rolls her eyes in the rearview mirror.

“It’s the only time I’ve had enough people to get to do it, Clarke, let me have this.”

Clarke smiles fondly and shakes her head as she turns back to the others. They’re staring at her, occasionally glancing at Bellamy before returning to her as though to make sure she’s still there. It makes her feel self-conscious, makes her skin itch and her hands scramble for something to do. She turns to Echo and begins a basic exam to check for other injuries.

She examines all of them, the cab silent for the entirety of the drive. And it’s—well it’s _awkward_ , if she’s honest. Of all the things she’d thought she’d feel when her friends made it back to Earth, uncomfortable was not at the top of the list.

She’s almost grateful when Madi stops the rover with a jolt that tells her she was a bit too firm on the clutch. She gathers the medical supplies to place them back into the med kid and tosses open the back gate. She spreads her arms before them grandiosely.

“Home sweet home.”


	2. your bones have grown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He understands it, her resentment for him. He’d left her to burn. He’d never forgive himself for it, let alone ask her to. And even if he hadn’t issued her a death sentence, even if Praimfaya had never come a second time, things between them were still just…different.
> 
> It had taken him a while to see it, those first few days cushioned by her constant prodding at the stitches in his temple or the pleasantries exchanged after so long spent apart. But once the air and the initial awkwardness had cleared, they’d butted heads on everything.
> 
> But today, her tone is what makes him stop, the rawness of her voice. When he turns back to meet her gaze, her eyes are brimming with tears. And honestly, at this point he just wants it all to stop. He wants to stop fighting over watch schedules, over weapon repair, over everything. He sees this woman in front of him, this girl that was once the closest thing he’d ever had to a best friend, and all he wants is just to stop fighting with her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy show day! Instead of releasing a BFSN selfie, I thought I’d put this up. Wow this took forever, I’m sorry. My MCAT is over and I didn’t die, which means this fic will continue. Thank y’all for your patience as I’ve been getting this ready. Another reminder that all of this story was plotted before s5 ever aired, so this only canon compliant through season 4.

The weeks following the landing were hard on Bellamy.

As soon as they’d arrived, Clarke had tried to air out the awkwardness they’d felt in the rover by giving them a tour of their home. They’d made a good life for themselves here, smack dab in the middle of the Green in a place that radiation seemed unable to touch. She had shown them the huts she and Madi had built for themselves, and the seven others she’d had ready for them while Bellamy tried not to think about the disappointment she must have felt when they hadn’t been there to fill them after the first five years were up.

There were so few of them. Bellamy had looked at Clarke questioningly at the lack of others, the emptiness of the clearing. She’d shaken her head. The bunker wasn’t here. He’d swallowed the fear that crept up his throat and followed her.

She showed them the shoreline of the lake just beyond the tree line, too. It was somewhat surreal, the way the trees trailed all long the sides of the water until they suddenly just stopped, the other side giving way to nothing but desert beyond for as far as the eye could see.

“Becca’s island?” Raven asks.

Clarke shakes her head. It’s gone.

“It’s been a good home,” she’d said. “But it’s not enough to protect us from Eligius. There’s no way they didn’t see your ship come down.” She had told them about the landing of the prisoner ship, about their attempts to lay low until they’d come up with a plan. “They’ll know we’re here.”

Bellamy had nodded.

“We’ll need backup,” he’d agreed. “We need to get everyone out of that bunker.”

Madi snorted.

“Sure, why didn’t we think of that?”

Clarke glared at her sharply, and Madi had the decency to look somewhat sheepish.

“Bellamy, you don’t understand,” Clarke had told him. He’d hated the pitying look in her eye. “All of Polis collapsed on that bunker. If there’d been any way to get them out a year ago, we’d have done it.”

“Clarke, that’s my _sister_ in there. Your _mother_ —”

“You think I don’t know that?” she’d snapped. In the tense silence that followed, the others eyed them warily. “I’m sorry, Bellamy. There was nothing else we could do.”

He’d wanted to argue with her, to get to her try again, to do something, _anything_. Raven cut him off before he’d had the chance.

“Well that’s because you didn’t have me.” Raven placed a hand on his shoulder. “We’ll get them out of there.”

Clarke’s eyes snapped to the gesture, then away so quickly he’d wondered if he’d imagined it. She’d given a tense nod, and then asked Madi to show them the stockpile of clothing they’d accumulated over the years. And then she was gone.

 

For the first few days after the landing, his head wound had kept him somewhat incapacitated. Clarke had placed him on partial bedrest, enforced by Madi. Being forced to stay stationary after so much time spent cooped up on the ring drove him crazy. Clarke’s constant absence drove him crazier. On the bright side, he’d been able to glean some information on the last six years of their lives from Madi, chatty in her excitement to meet the people she’d heard so much about. She’d told him about the day Clarke found her six months after Praimfaya hiding in a cave a few miles from here. It had taken time for Madi to trust her, refusing to speak for almost two weeks before Clarke had shown her the rover.

“Clarke taught me how to drive, I taught her how to hunt,” Madi had told him. “We’re a team.”

“A good one, from the sound of it,” he’d said. “Were there any others?”

Madi shook her head.

“Just us.” She’d been quiet for a moment, hesitant, before she added, “Clarke radioed you, though. Every day. I think it kept her company.”

Bellamy had smiled. “We all missed her.”

“No, I mean,” Madi had stammered quickly, “she radioed _you_ , Bellamy.”

He hadn’t known what to say to that. He’d almost told her about those days spent in Clarke’s cell, told her that Clarke was the only thing that had calmed the panic that had threatened to consume him up on the Ring. Instead, he’d just said, “I missed her, too.”

 

Two weeks later, Bellamy wishes he could say he was adjusting as well as the others, who all appear to have merged into life with Madi and Clarke almost seamlessly. Everyone loves Madi, and who can blame them? The kid’s as resilient as any of the other members of the original hundred had been when they’d first been sent to Earth.

Echo has been working with her to improve the bows and arrows she’d built, and the two of them often spend early mornings hunting to support the extra mouths to feed. He sees the relief in Clarke’s expression as she watches the food stockpile grow and wonders how she’d planned on staying fed if they hadn’t returned to the ground when they did. Madi seems to relish in her time in the woods with Echo, seems to enjoy speaking her old language and learning how to track prey the way Azgeda had trained their people to. Echo doesn’t seem to mind it, either.

Even Murphy seems to have taken a liking to her. More than once, Bellamy has walked in on an impromptu lesson of literature or math. It’s good for him, Bellamy thinks, to have a purpose again. He’d seen the way the futility of space had taken its toll on Murphy, had watched it dull his edges. Here on the ground, it’s almost like he’d never left. Bellamy never thought he’d be glad to see Murphy’s snark back in full force, but the day he makes a teasing comment to Clarke about Madi’s preference for art over math, it feels like a weight is lifted from his shoulders.

Now back on the ground, Monty and Harper keep their distance from one another, finally in a place where they no longer have to be in the other’s vicinity even after a painful breakup. Six years with nothing to do but wait was a long time, and as far as Bellamy could tell, it seemed that without the end of the world looming over their heads, the only thing keeping them together was fear of being alone. In a space station filled by only seven people, maybe that just hadn’t been enough anymore.

Work on the bunker has been slow and fruitless, though Raven and Emori have been working tirelessly, endless brainstorming sessions that get them nowhere until one of them gets frustrated by the other telling them why their ideas will all fail. Two weeks later, and still no progress. It’s making Bellamy stir crazy.

Clarke is still avoiding him, and Bellamy tries not to think about why. He wants to talk to her, to tell her how good it is to see her alive and happy. Mostly he wants to tell her how sorry he is for leaving her. But every time they’re left alone with each other, every time he thinks he’s worked up the courage to say it, fear and shame clutch at his stomach so tightly it makes it hard to breathe. And then the moment has passed, and Clarke makes some excuse about having to inventory the supplies in the armory or checking in on Madi. And then she’s gone again.

He understands it, her resentment for him. He’d left her to burn. He’d never forgive _himself_ for it, let alone ask her to. And even if he hadn’t issued her a death sentence, even if Praimfaya had never come a second time, things between them were still just…different.

It had taken him a while to see it, those first few days cushioned by her constant prodding at the stitches in his temple or the pleasantries exchanged after so long spent apart. But once the air and the initial awkwardness had cleared, they’d butted heads on _everything_. He thought hunting would best be done under the cover of nightfall, she insisted on sending them out in the early morning when the wildlife was most active. She wanted to wait out Eligius, let them come to familiar territory, but Bellamy wanted to run reconnaissance to try and figure out what they could before Eligius found them first.

But something about today is different. Maybe it’s the headache he still hasn’t quite kicked, or the fact that he misses the actual _shower_ they’d had on the Ark. Or maybe it’s just that his sister is still buried underground in who knows what condition. But he’s had enough.

“I just don’t understand why we can’t at least let Raven _see_ if there’s something that can be done,” Bellamy demands, tugging a hand through his hair.

Clarke pinches the bridge of her nose, huffing a sigh so deep he sees her shoulders shrug with it.

“Because she’s needed _here_ , repairing what weapons we have so that when Eligius comes for us—and they _will_ come for us, Bellamy—we can be ready.”

“Do you actually think we stand a chance?” he asks sharply. “Nine of us against an entire ship full of them? If we don’t get the rest of our people out of that bunker, we’ll be dead within the month, and then who’s going to be around to open that door?”

“I _know_ that,” she snaps. “But what happens if we leave, and Eligius attacks while we’re gone? Do you think three rifles are going to be enough for the others to protect themselves? For _Madi_ to protect herself?”

“We’re wasting _time_ , Clarke! Time the people in the bunker may not have!” His chest is heaving, fists clenched at his side so tightly it makes his knuckles ache. He turns sharply toward the door, his strides quick with anger.

“Do you think I haven’t tried?” Clarke shouts from behind him. “Do you think that I haven’t spent the last six years trying to figure out how to tell you that I don’t know how to get our people—your _sister_ —out of there?”

Her tone is what makes him stop, the rawness of her voice. When he turns back to meet her gaze, her eyes are brimming with tears. And honestly, at this point he just wants it all to stop. He wants to stop fighting over watch schedules, over weapon repair, over _everything_. He sees this woman in front of him, this girl that was once the closest thing he’d ever had to a best friend, and all he wants is just to stop fighting with her.

“I’ve tried everything, Bellamy,” she says softly. “There’s nothing left to do.”

He steps toward her slowly, gently. Without thinking, his hand slips over her arm, coming to rest just above her elbow.

“Please, Clarke,” he whispers. “I just—I need to see it.”

She lets out a long sigh, her eyes lowering to the floor. And he can see it then, her thinking through every option until she’s analyzed this this to death. For a moment, it’s the old Clarke he sees, and it makes his stomach sink. He knows what she’s going to say. But then she closes her eyes, letting out a breath that brushes across his collarbone.

“Okay,” she says. “You and I will take the rover out tomorrow, but we _can’t_ bring Raven. She has to stay here.”

Her gaze is pleading, a silent appeal for him to understand. And he does. He sees where she’s coming from, even if he doesn’t agree. Bellamy knows he’ll never be able to work out the logistics of getting that door open like Raven could. He knows that tomorrow won’t be a rescue mission.

But for today, it’s enough.

* * *

 Madi is still sound asleep when Clarke hoists her pack onto her shoulders and slips out of their hut. Dawn is near, and the sky bathes the camp in a soft blue light that seems to cling to her skin and ease the tension in her shoulders. She takes a deep breath as she makes her way to the food stockpile and swipes a couple of apples to shove into the side pocket of her bag. She separates out rations for the two of them, packing them with more care and attention than the task really requires.

Her mind catalogues the tasks of the day as her hands work. The route they’ll take to the bunker to avoid the leftover pockets of radiation that still cover the ground, the amount of water she should put in the canteens based on the weather patterns lately. Anything to take her mind off of thinking about what the hell she’s going to say to Bellamy for eight hours.

“Morning, sunshine.”

Raven’s voice from over her shoulder startles her. Clarke turns, cinching the drawstring on her ration pack.

“What are you doing up so early?” Clarke asks. “We’ve talked about this, you’re needed here while we—”

Raven waves her off.

“No, I know,” she dismisses. “It sucks, but I agree with you. And if you tell Bellamy I said that, I’ll deny it.”

Clarke tries to offer a smile, but she thinks it comes out as more of a grimace.

“Here.” Raven shoves a handful of metal chips in her hands, each possessing a blinking red light. “Monty and I went back to the crash site and—”

“Raven, you know Eligius would—”

“God, would you shut _up_ for five seconds. I know, no one’s supposed to go there because of the big bad prison miners. Whatever. We did anyway. And thanks to us, the scrap metal we could salvage from the wreckage is now usable. You’re welcome.”

Clarke wants to argue, but honestly a Raven with supplies and scrap metal is far more useful to all of them than a Raven without.

“Anyway, I was able to make these sensors from some leftover bits of the com on the ship,” she says, nodding toward Clarke’s hands. “They generate micro-shockwaves that can be used to measure seismic activity to calculate the mass and density of the debris on top of the bunker. Maybe we can get an idea of what we’re dealing with to get our people out of there. Monty set them up to radio the data over the air so that we can access it remotely from here.”

Raven talks her through the setup, the need to spread out the sensors evenly so the signals overlap in the right way to produce the best picture they can. Clarke does her best to describe what she can remember, using a spare bit of charcoal in her pack to draw a diagram on a page in her sketchbook, and Raven points out a few areas she thinks will be best for placement.

“And that’ll be enough to tell you what you need to know?” Clarke asks as she shoves the book into her pack.

She shrugs.

“It can’t be worse than not knowing anything,” Raven says. Her eyes shift to Bellamy’s hut, a soft glow shining through his window as his shadow shifts across the room. “And I can’t just do nothing.”

A lump rises to Clarke’s throat, and she does her best to swallow it down hard. It only partially works.

“Hey,” Raven asks. “You good?”

She nods, offering a small smile.

“Clarke, none of us blame you for not being able to get them out on your own,” Raven says. Her gaze shifts again to the glow across the clearing. “Especially not him. He’s just scared for Octavia.”

Clarke nods, clenching her teeth to still the quiver that has risen to her lip. She hates it.

“Everything’s different,” she whispers. She can feel Raven’s eyes on her. “We argue all the time, like we’re back at the dropship all over again.” Clarke stares at the ground resolutely as she forces her voice to steady itself. “He looks at me like a stranger, and I don’t know how to fix it.”

Raven sighs and places a hand on her shoulder. Clarke can see the tension in her frame, sees that comforting her goes against her nature. It’s awkward, but familiar. It’s _her_ Raven.

“Losing you was hard on all of us, but Bellamy—” she says finally. Her eyes return to Clarke, soft in a way she’d forgotten Raven could be. “It almost destroyed him.”

She doesn’t know what to say to that.

“I think it hardened him a little bit,” she continues. “Toughened him up. And now he’s trying to figure out how to be the Bellamy he was and the Bellamy that lost you. Give him time.”

“Time,” Clarke repeats.

Raven nods, a smirk tugging at the corners of her mouth.

“One thing there never seems to be enough of on the ground.”

Clarke tries to force a laugh in reply as Bellamy emerges behind her.

“You coming, too?” he asks Raven. The hope in his voice makes Clarke’s stomach twist.

Raven snorts.

“Just here to make fun of you, old man.” She gives Clarke a grin before she leaves them alone together.

There’s a beat before either of them speaks.

“So I packed rations for the trip,” Clarke says, shoving the last pouch into her pack. “Raven gave us a job to do while we’re there, something to help her potentially come up with a plan.”

Bellamy nods, but doesn’t respond. She wants to say something, anything to break this awkwardness between them.

“I’m sorry,” she settles on. “That we couldn’t bring Raven with us.”

Bellamy nods.

“I know the agreement we reached,” he says. He offers her a half-smile. “Just a day trip.”

 

By the time they arrive to Polis, Clarke has a knot in her stomach and soreness from the tension in her muscles. The ride was long and quiet, excruciatingly quiet, but for passing comments of a landmark here or there that had changed since Bellamy had last seen it.

He was trying and so was she, but god, every time she opened her mouth, the words would disappear before they came out. She didn’t know what to say to him. When did she stop knowing what to say to him?

She’d radioed him from Eden every day, sometimes for hours. She’d told him about building the huts, about how hunting was going that season, asked questions that never received answers. She’d talked to a nonexistent Bellamy for years about _everything_ , and suddenly she has the real thing right in front of her, and all she can think to talk about is a couple of trees and rocks.

Her feet hit the ground with a crunch as they collide with the gravel beneath them. She slams the rover door shut with just a bit too much force as the heat and humidity begin to cling to her skin. She meets Bellamy at the front of the rover and stares at the nearly unrecognizable city before them.

It looks the same as it did when she was last in Polis six months ago. Dry. Brown. _Dead_. So much dust covers everything that it forces them to shield their faces with their shirts when the wind picks up too much. Bellamy is stock still as he takes it all in, his frame tense and rigid as his eyes sweep over the rubble.

“Fuck,” he breathes.

And for a moment, Clarke sees it for the first time all over again. The now battered tower that once served at the headquarters for the grounders’ coalition. The buildings that now rest in crumpled heaps of bricks and concrete, iron rods and support beams jutting from their depths. His eyes eventually land on the largest pile of debris, located right at the base of the tower. The bunker.

He steps toward it and Clarke follows, silent but for the sound of their footsteps on the graveled earth. She wants to say something to him, some reassurance or bit of optimism that she doesn’t have. But what is there to say, really?

She lets him stand there in front of the buried door that keeps his sister hidden underground. He doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t ask. Before long, she sees the clouds on the horizon and knows that a storm will be here in a few hours. They don’t have all day. She places a gentle hand on his shoulder.

“I’ll get to work,” she says. “You keep watch.”

She doesn’t think there’s anything to watch for. Eligius likely won’t venture this far into the dead zone, and it’s a literal ghost town in Polis. But she knows that Bellamy needs time to let it sink in and that, if nothing else, she can give him.

It’s an awkward climb to to the top of the rubble heap. She sets to work placing the sensors across the debris, climbing from crumbled building to crumbled building to locate the places she and Raven had discussed. It takes time, longer than she’d thought it would, the structure unstable and rickety beneath her feet. As her hands work, she tries to focus on the feeling of gravel pressing into her palms rather than the feeling of Bellamy’s eyes on her back.

As she makes her way to the next point, she steps on a particularly precarious ledge and feels it immediately buckle beneath her weight. Her foot slips intothe crevice that opens with a loud crack, causing her ankle to twist with a jerk as the sharp concrete scrapes her skin. She yelps.

“What was that?” Bellamy calls. She can’t see him from where she is, the peak of the rubble blocking his view. “You good?”

Clarke grits her teeth against the sting and tugs the fabric of her pants up over her calf. Spots of blood ooze slowly from where the concrete presses into her skin. Her ankle will swell, that much she knows for sure, but she doesn’t think she did enough damage to break it.

“Yeah,” she answers. “I’m fine.”

She takes a deep breath and begins to work her foot out of the crack. A sharp pain shoots up her leg as her sore ankle jostles back and forth, and she bites her lip to keep from crying out. The concrete tugs along her skin as she slips free, her breath coming in fast pants. She struggles to her feet and tests putting weight on her leg. It holds, but painfully.

With a hobble, Clarke makes her way to the last sensor location that Raven had noted. This one is higher than the others, which turns out to be a blessing in disguise that allows her to mostly use her arms to pull herself up.

“Clarke!” Bellamy shouts from the other side of the rubble. She turns to see him staring at the horizon. The clouds that had skimmed the horizon were now reaching the edge of Polis, flashing with lightning a sickening green color. Shit. They’ve been here too long. “Is that—”

“Black rain!” she yells. She hooks the final sensor onto the debris and prays that it holds, shoving the diagram back into her pack so quickly the zipper scrapes harshly against her knuckles. “We have to move. _Now_!”

The height of the last sensor location is enough to make her stomach flip as she searches for a way down. She drops to her knees and rolls onto her stomach, placing her hands at the edge of the ledge. She lowers herself down as much as she can, but there’s still a good five foot drop between her feet and the rubble below them. She’s going to have to drop. Fuck.

She braces herself and lets go, trying to shift as much weight to her good foot as she can. She hits the concrete hard, and pain shoots through her ankle so intense it makes the edges of her vision go black. A yelp slips from her mouth. She forces herself to clear her head and begins the descent.

She climbs down the rubble as quickly as she can with a limp and prays the debris doesn’t give way underneath her feet. Bellamy is still staring at the horizon, the flickering clouds moving toward them so quickly it makes her stomach flip. She hooks her fingers into the sleeve of his jacket and gives a sharp tug, dragging him after her.

“Get to the rover!” she shouts over the ever-increasing roar of the wind. She’d forgotten how quickly these storms traveled over the dead zone. She glances over her shoulder to see that drops have already begun to fall a couple of blocks down the barren street.

Their footsteps fall heavily on the pavement as they sprint to the vehicle, the sound of raindrops getting closer and closer on their heels. Her ankle throbs with each step, slowing her down and allowing Bellamy to reach the Rover a moment before she does. Clarke tosses her pack through the open window of the passenger door as Bellamy slips into the driver’s seat.

“What are you doing?” he yells behind her as she turns to the rear of the vehicle. The storm is so close that it’s deafening, roaring over the pavement of Polis.

“The solar panels!” She limps to the side of the rover and starts twisting at the screws of the panel mount. “If the acid hits them it’ll eat straight through the solar cells, and then we’re stuck here!”

She feels the rover jolt with the impact of him closing the door, the sound inaudible over the storm that’s racing toward them. He sets to work on the panel on the opposite side as she fiddles with the mount’s screws. She makes quick work of the first three, shoving them into her pocket just as the first drop of rain hits her forehead. It burns the skin, and she grits her teeth against the sting. She turns her attention to the last screw, only to find that it rotates in place, never loosening its grip on the panel.

“ _Clarke_!”

“It won’t budge!” she shouts in frustration. “The screw is stripped!”

He’s at her side in a moment, pack in hand. He rummages through the pockets as the rain picks up around them. She yelps as multiple drops hit her hand, searing the skin. Bellamy pulls a pair of pliers from the bag and shoves them into her hand as he shrugs off his jacket.

“What are you _doing_?” she yells as she clasps the clamp over the head of the screw. He pulls the jacket over her shoulders and head to shelter her from the rain.

“Just keep working!” he barks.

She pulls and jimmies the screw, and the rain begins to pick up a bit more. Bellamy grunts as it makes contact with his bare arm. Her hands move as fast as they can, each tug moving the screw a bit more and a bit more and _finally_ it breaks free. Bellamy keeps the jacket over her head as she shoves the solar panel under her arm and places the final screw in her pocket.

They rush to the back of the rover and toss the door open. The sky opens up just as Bellamy helps Clarke in, and suddenly it’s a downpour. He shouts in pain as he clambers into the rover behind her and pulls the door shut with a slam.

“Take off your shirt,” she orders immediately as she pulls out her canteen and unscrews the lid with shaky hands.

He obliges, tugging the hem gingerly over his skin. Bellamy hisses when she pours the water over his arms, rubbing to spread it over the burned flesh. She pours a bit into her cupped hand and brings it to his face, her fingers grazing the burns she finds there as tenderly as possible as she pushes his curls back from his face to rinse his cheekbones and forehead.

She lets him take over the rest and pours a bit of water over her own hand and uses the rest to rinse her face. The water stings against the raw skin but helps soothe the ache it brings. She assesses Bellamy, his chest heaving as he pants either from exertion or pain, she isn’t sure. He definitely caught the brunt of the rain, angry pink marks trailing up his forearms and neck.

She spots a particularly angry looking burn on his cheekbone and reaches for her pack, rummaging through it until her fingers find her med kit. She pulls the antiseptic cream from the box and dabs a bit on a finger.

“Hold still,” she tells him as she brushes away a stray curl from his face and dabs the cream onto the burn. He winces, but doesn’t pull away.

The chaos stills, and she finds herself face to face with a very wet and very shirtless Bellamy. He’s close enough that she can feel the heat of his skin even in the damp mugginess in the air, the vehicle silent but for the rain that pelts the metal roof of the vehicle. She looks at him then, _really_ looks at him, at the way his freckles have softened with so much time spent in the dark of space. For the first time, she sees the lines that have begun to etch their way across his face, faint but still there just the same. Laughter lines, she realizes. It’s almost enough to make her reach out and touch them.

She’s the first to pull away, clearing her throat awkwardly.

“Will I live?” he asks sardonically.

She snorts.

“You’ll pull through.”

The silence that follows is tense, the unspoken questions and words dangling in the air like a child’s mobile.

“I don’t understand,” Bellamy says finally, reaching for his own canteen and pouring it over his shirt. “Raven said it would be safe to come down after five years. Where the hell did that storm come from?”

Clarke shakes her head.

“Just because the ground is survivable doesn’t mean the effects of the radiation are gone. Eden stretches in about a fifty mile radius from our spot next to Becca’s lake, and the acid rain doesn’t usually make it past the border. Something about that valley seems to keep it out.”

Bellamy shakes his head as he wrings out his shirt and pulls it over his head.

“It’s like it came out of fucking nowhere.”

“After Praimfaya it’s like weather patterns have changed,” she agrees. “Thunderstorms come out of nowhere. Some days the temperature changes so quickly it’s like having two seasons in the same day.”

“And you managed to survive down here all this time?”

She thinks about the first few months down here, when she was alone and hungry and still sick from radiation, until one day things got a little better. Until she found Madi.

“Yeah,” she says. “We did.”

Bellamy looks at her, eyes so sad it breaks her heart a little.

“Clarke,” he stammers. “Clarke, I’m sorry—”

“Don’t,” she says, placing a hand on his knee. “I’m not angry with you for leaving me here, Bellamy. I never was.” Her eyes meet his, his gaze so open and honest and Bellamy, _her_ Bellamy, that it makes her breath catch. “It had to be done.”

She can see it then, the way that his shoulders release some of the tension they’ve been carrying since they landed. He leans forward, his elbows resting against his knees and rubs his face haggardly. They shift to his curls as he his breath catches.

“Clarke, what the hell is that?” Her eyes follow the path of his, to her khaki pant leg that is stained dark with blood. “What did you do?”

“It’s nothing, I’m fine,” she says. “Just a scratch.”

He shoves away her protests as he reaches for her leg and pulls it gently into his lap. She hisses as she pulls the fabric away from her skin and over the wound. The scrape is still oozing blood, but it doesn’t appear to be too deep. The bruises that cover her swollen ankle that peeks from her boot are much more concerning.

“The debris shifted while I was putting up one of the sensors,” she tells him. He begins to work at her laces, pushing away her hands when she tries to stop him. “Bellamy, it’s not a big dea—”

A gasp leaves her lungs as he pulls the boot over her foot.

“Sorry,” he says. He’s gentle, his touch soft over her tender skin as he tilts it gingerly to either side, his eyes scanning the injury. “I’m not going to lie to you, I have no idea what I’m looking for.”

She lets out a breathy laugh, pulling her pack into her lap. She fishes out a bandage from the bottom and places it in his hands. Bellamy is attentive as she guides him through the wrapping process, under the arch and behind the heel again and again, his hands unpracticed but kind until he knots the ends. She pulls her foot away, but he grabs it and softly pulls it back into his lap with a warning glare.

“Keep it elevated,” he says. “Even I know that much.”

She gives him a wry smile.

“What do you think?” she asks. “Do I get to keep the leg?”

He feigns a look of uncertainty, eyeing her bandaged foot with pursed lips.

“You know,” he says, “we may have prevented an amputation.”

“Thank god.”

The ridiculousness and the waning adrenaline hits them all at once, and suddenly they’re both laughing, the heaving, breathless, eye-watering kind of laughter, and the sound of Bellamy laughing is just so _much_. It fills her lungs and warms her chest, and even as her stomach aches with her cackles all she can think is that she just wants to keep hearing that sound over and over again.

They catch their breath as Bellamy wipes at his eyes, and Clarke can’t help but watch him, all flushed cheeks and dark eyes that dance with amusement. There he is, she thinks. He’s still there. _Her_ Bellamy.

The rain has begun to die down, now only a minor shower that drums against the roof of the rover. It’ll be safe to leave soon, and they’ll have to find a new screw for that damn panel—

“Shit,” she says, her eyes wide. “Bellamy, the sensors. They were in the black rain.”

His eyes fall shut, the amusement and color draining from his face. He heaves a sigh, shaky as it falls from his lips. His hand tugs haggardly at his curls and rubs at his temples.

“You said the panels on the rover were destroyed when they were left in the black rain?” he asks. His voice is rough.

She nods. She hates herself for it.

“But the sensors were made of different material,” she says. “Maybe—”

His fist hits the wall of the rover before she can finish. He hisses with the impact, his jaw ticking wildly. He drops his hand absentmindedly, flexing it at his side absentmindedly as his eyes stare blankly ahead.

“Bellamy.”

He doesn’t meet her eyes.

“Bellamy, look at me.” His gaze stays fixed toward the windshield, still blurry from the rain that falls outside. Clarke’s fingers tremble as she slips them beneath his chin and gently palms his jaw, turning his sad eyes to meet hers. “We don’t know anything yet. For all we know, Raven is already receiving the data she needs.”

“And what if she’s not, Clarke?” he rasps. “What if this storm just destroyed the only chance I had of seeing Octavia again?”

Clarke shakes her head.

“Even if the storm did ruin the sensors, do you think Raven is going to give up that easily?” His eyes are fixed back onto the floor. Clarke brings her other hand to cup his jaw between her hands. She dips her gaze to look him in the eye. “Do you think _I_ would give up that easily?”

When he finally looks at her, his eyes are glassy with tears he refuses to shed. They search her face, soft and warm and sad.

“I’m not giving up,” she promises. “So you don’t get to give up either.”

His shoulders lose some of their tension as her thumb grazes his jaw soothingly. He leans into it, though she can’t decide if he even realizes he does. And there it is: that feeling she’s been waiting for, the one that was there that last day in Becca’s lab. For a moment, in the silence of the storm and humidity that makes her curls stick to the back of her neck, with so much left unsaid between them, she feels it. For just that moment, it’s like he never left.

“The rain sounds like it’s stopped,” he says finally. “We should probably get back to the others.”

She nods, burying the disappointment that creeps up her throat deep within her. He owes her nothing, she knows that. People change, she reminds herself. Six years is a long time.

The back gate of the rover opens to let in the steamy air of Polis, and Bellamy jumps down. His boots meet the mud with a squelch. He offers her his hand, and though she doesn’t need it, she takes it anyway. They put the panels back on the rover without incident, Clarke using a screw from beneath one of the benches under the seats to replace the damaged one. Bellamy gives the rubble one last glance before he starts the rover and puts it in reverse. And then they’re off.

* * *

The trip home is still quiet, but this time it’s the comfortable silence they’d found so many years ago. From time to time they speak, discussing the next week’s hunting schedule or deciding how best to ration food. The tension that once filled these types of discussion has ebbed, the edges of their tone dulled until it’s almost like they’ve been doing this forever. But for the most part, they leave each other to their own thoughts, and let the silence between them cover them like a blanket, warm and familiar.

By the time they arrive back at camp, Bellamy’s joints ache with disuse. That happens more and more lately, and he swears that Raven hadn’t gotten the gravity simulators on the Ring quite right, and now the adjustment was straining his knees. When they’d first gotten to the ground he’d tried to tell her as much.

“My calibrations were flawless,” she’d scoffed. “You’re just getting old.”

He’d glared at her.

“I can build you a walker if you want, old man. Wouldn’t be any trouble.”

Clarke had chided him for making such a rude hand gesture with Madi around.

The sky is rapidly growing dark, the falling sun painting the sky a soft orange. The others are finishing up the day’s tasks when he takes the key out of the ignition, the drone of the engine finally giving way to a soft quiet between him and Clarke. He lets himself savor it for a moment before he opens the door.

Raven is the first to greet them.

“Took you long enough. How’d it go?”

He looks to Clarke and sees the hesitation in her eyes. Her mouth is set in a grim line as Raven looks between them.

“What?” Raven asks. “What happened?”

“Black rain,” Clarke answers. “We hit a patch of it in Polis and had to wait it out. That’s why we’re so late getting back.”

Monty catches up to them just as Raven’s eyes go wide.

“Black rain?” he asks. “I thought the ground was safe again.”

Clarke shakes her head.

“It doesn’t reach the valley, but it still pops up from time to time in the dead zone.”

“Wait,” Raven says. “Please tell me the rain hit before you got those sensors up.”

She looks at Bellamy, her eyes boring into his. He swallows hard and shakes his head.

“But they could have survived it, right?” Clarke insists. “Surely you made them weatherproof?”

Raven rounds on her then, squaring her shoulders and meeting Clarke’s gaze with ferocity.

“Well yeah,” she seethes, “but a thunderstorm and a fucking downpour of concentrated acid are two very different things.”

Bellamy places a hand on her shoulder as a warning. Clarke’s eyes latch onto the movement as Raven’s posture seems to relax some. She takes a step back.

“We won’t know anything until we check for a signal on the com system,” he says. “Monty, did you get it up and running?”

He nods.

“We brought back the hard drive and screens from the ship when we brought back the scraps for the sensors,” Monty says. “It’s not ready to build a simulation of the rubble yet, but we can probably do a signal test to see if it’s transmitting data.”

He lets Clarke put an arm over his shoulders to support her ankle as Monty leads them to the makeshift headquarters he, Raven, and Emori have set up in Raven’s hut.Honestly the setup is so haphazard that Bellamy can’t belief it would ever work. Wires jut in every direction from the edges of the com system, but when Monty presses the power button, it comes to life.

Raven takes a seat in front of the screen, which changes rapidly as she taps away at the keyboard.

“Here goes nothing,” she says. She presses enter.

Three green dots appear on the black screen.

“It looks like a few of them are still up and running,” Monty says. “We’re getting something.”

Raven nods and stares at the screen. She turns to Bellamy.

“It’s better than nothing, but—”

“It’s still not enough,” he finishes.

She shakes her head.

He’s gone from Raven’s hut before anyone can say anything. He doesn’t pay attention to where he’s going, but his feet bring him to the woodpile at the edge of the clearing. Bellamy grabs as many as he can tuck beneath his arm and carries them to the fire pit at the center of camp. He tosses them onto the pile with more force than necessary.

He picks up the piece of flint that Clarke keeps stored beneath one of the logs that surrounds the fire and sets to work getting it to spark. It catches, finally, and once it’s flickering beneath the wood he takes a seat.

The sensors were down, and Octavia and the rest of their people are still stuck in a bunker. The food supply should have run out over a year ago. For all Bellamy knows, maybe she’s already dead. The thought makes him nauseous.

He doesn’t know how long he’s been there, but by the time Monty finds him the sky is nearly dark. He sits down on the log next to him but doesn’t say anything. If there’s one thing he appreciates about Monty, it’s that he doesn’t pry. The others join them within a few minutes, each of them taking a seat on one of the logs. Harper and Emori discussing plans for a new med bay for Clarke, and Bellamy prefers to focus his thoughts on the idea of Clarke being able to have a real space to work again. It’s almost enough to make him smile.

Clarke isn’t far behind them, hobbling along with Madi in tow. Even after the time he’s spent here, watching her with Madi is still a source of awe for him. He’s never seen this side of Clarke, so openly fierce and protective. Her polished ruthlessness has given way to something raw and real, and honestly he doesn’t know what to make of it.

She takes a seat on his other side opposite of Monty as Madi slips off toward Harper. The two had hit it off right from the landing and if the smile on Madi’s face is any indication, that attachment has only continued to grow.

Clarke nudges his shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” she says, her voice low to keep from attracting the attention of the others. “About Octavia.”

He takes a long breath, watching the flicker of the firelight intently.

“I know,” he tells her. “I’m sorry about your mom.”

She doesn’t answer. They sit like that for a moment, silently staring at the flames with their shoulders touching. She doesn’t acknowledge that little detail, but she doesn’t lean away either. He chalks it up to the crisp air that begins to fall on the camp as the sun disappears behind the trees.

Despite the events of the day, there’s a pleasant energy that hovers in the air as they all come together, like a reminder that even when the bad days are upon them, they’ve faced worse together and come out the other side. Harper and Emori listen with wide smiles as Madi dramatically gestures with the story she tells. Echo and Murphy have taken to fire duty, tossing a few logs onto into the pit as they toss teasing jibes back and forth. Raven and Monty have begun to discuss the logistics of getting inside the bunker before Emori overhears them.

“You know who that sounds like a good problem for?” she says from across the fire. “Tomorrow Raven and Tomorrow Monty.”

Monty gives a soft chuckle.

“Emori’s right,” Murphy chimes in. “New rule: no talking about our problems around the campfire. I didn’t sign up for that sappy shit.”

“Language,” Clarke reminds him.

Murphy glances at Madi.

“My bad, Little Clarke. But from now on, this campfire is only for non-life threatening talk. We deserve to have a little fun once in a while.”

“I can get on board with that,” Harper agrees. The rest of the group nods, and if Bellamy’s honest with himself, it’s a relief.

The conversation only rises from there. Before long, he can hear Emori and Echo telling Madi ghost stories they’d learned on the ground, and he finds himself listening to the dramatic spikes and lulls of their voices. He knows Clarke can hear it, too, can practically feel her itching to put a stop to it before it gives Madi nightmares, but she doesn’t. It surprises him.

And despite the events of the day, it’s actually really _nice_. It’s nice to hear the sounds of laughter over the crackle of the fire, banter that isn’t laced with tension and fear. Clarke sits next to him through it all, and though she’s quiet, there’s a soft smile on her face.

It’s a couple hours after dark when she stands, stretching her back and rolling her shoulders.

“Alright, _Natblida_ ,” she calls. “Time for bed.”

“Come on, Clarke,” Madi goads. “One more hour? Everybody else is staying up.”

“Not everybody else has lessons in the morning,” Clarke says. She arches a brow and gives Madi a look that Bellamy is really glad isn’t leveled at him. There’s a brief standoff, a staring contest between the two of them until Clarke narrows her eyes and nods toward the huts. Madi rolls her eyes but does as she’s told. Clarke trails behind her toward their hut.

“It’s weird, isn’t it?” Monty asks quietly from beside him. “Seeing Clarke like this?”

He watches as a glow appears in the window of the hut, wonders what Clarke says to her as she clambers into bed. He wonders if she’ll tell her a story, if she’ll tuck her in. He wonders if her voice will soften as she says goodnight the way it did when he used to walk her back to her quarters in Arkadia.

“Yeah,” Bellamy says after a moment. “But I think it suits her.”

Monty smiles.

“I’ll be right back,” he says.

Monty leaves his seat so quickly it makes the log beneath them shift slightly. Bellamy has a hard time remembering whose hut is whose in the ring around the fire pit, but Monty disappears into one he can only assume is his own. Clarke returns as he does, making her way to her seat next to Bellamy.

“All good?” Bellamy asks.

Clarke nods and gives him a small smile. He hesitates for a moment after she sits, a pregnant silence falling between them until he speaks again.

“You’re good to her,” he says. “She’s lucky to have you.”

Clarke shakes her head.

“You’ve got that backwards.”

Monty emerges from his cabin with a large container perched on his hip and a cluster of tin cups hooked to some sort of key ring that dangles from his hip, clanging loudly as he makes his way to the group.

“After the events of the day, I think we could all use a drink,” he announces.

He sets the container down next to Bellamy, and he sees the clear liquid slosh within it as Monty sets to work filling the tin cups. Moonshine. Fuck.

“How the hell did you get a still up and running so fast?” Raven asks as Monty shoves a cup into her hands.

“Ye of little faith.” He fills another and hands it to Bellamy, despite his protests. “If we’re going to make the campfire a No Eligius Or Bunker Discussion Zone, we’re going to make it fun.”

Clarke gives an exasperated shake of her head, but she’s smiling as she accepts the cup from Monty and takes a sip, only recoiling slightly from the taste. Bellamy takes a drink of his own, the burn in his throat painful but somehow comforting.

The rest of the night goes downhill from there, he supposes. The conversation gets rowdier with each cup everyone downs. Bellamy tries to keep a clear head, only allowing himself two drinks before he sets the cup aside. He notices Clarke doing the same thing, though her words are slurred ever so slightly when she tells him she’s going to get more wood for the fire. He’s buzzed enough to acknowledge that he misses the warmth of her shoulder against his when she leaves. The rest of the group is trashed, and the air is filled with slurred profanity and hearty laughter. It settles in his stomach and makes him feel warm. Or maybe that’s just the alcohol.

He and Echo get into a debate over the merits of bows and arrows versus rifles for hunting, with Echo insisting that the stealth provided by a bow is infinitely more valuable than the power behind a rifle.

“But with a gun, you run the risk of damage around the wound,” she slurs. “You Sky People waste so much meat because it gets torn to shreds by a bullet.”

“But it only takes one shot,” Bellamy counters. “Whereas with a bow, it may take you three or four before larger game go down.”

“Not if you know what you’re doing,” Echo says with a wink.

The flirtatious tone that had once painted her tone has given way to friendly taunts, a running joke between the two of them. It had taken a while, but they’d all grown to like and trust Echo. He supposes six years in close quarters with a person would do that.

It takes him longer than he’d like to admit before he notices Clarke hasn’t returned from the collecting more firewood. The realization causes panic to creep up his spine.

“I’m going to go check on Clarke,” he says, trying to force the fear out of his voice. “Try not to wake up Madi, please.”

“Whatever, old man,” Raven drawls, raising her cup in a drunken salute.

He grabs his rifle and hoists it over his shoulder, listens to it clank against his back as he stalks toward the lake. His heart thuds rapidly in his chest as he breaks the tree line and finds Clarke nowhere near the pile of firewood. He thinks about calling after her, but decides against it. If Eligius is here, he doesn’t want them to know he is, too.

He treads carefully toward the edge of the trees, the branches of the evergreens creating a thick blanket that masks the shoreline of the lake behind it. He thinks he makes out a silhouette in the moonlight, one that makes his breath catch. He raises his rifle to his shoulder and steps carefully toward the person.

He steps on a branch just as he clears the trees, and Clarke whips around and snaps her own rifle to her shoulder faster than he could blink. They both freeze.

“Jesus Christ,” she breathes. “What the _hell_ , Bellamy, I could have killed you!”

“I’m sorry,” he says, holding his hands up at his sides. “You didn’t come back and I got worried. I thought Eligius had found you.”

She lets out a heavy breath as she drops her rifle to her side and runs a hand through her hair, tangling her fingers in her cropped locks that glow silver in the moonlight.

“Shit, I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn’t even think about that.” The smile she gives him is a sheepish one. “I’m not used to having so many people looking out for me.”

He forces a smile, but his chest aches with it. It’s not meant to be a dig at him, he knows, but it still makes his stomach clench with guilt. She eyes him warily with her rifle at her side, her stance hesitant.

“What are you doing out here?” he asks. “You okay?”

She nods with a smile that doesn’t quite meet her eyes. “I’m fine.”

He gives her a look, one he knows she recognizes by the resignation on her face. She drops her eyes to the ground and taps her foot against the base of her rifle.

“I’m just not used to so many people being around all the time,” she admits. “Sometimes it just gets a little…”

“Overwhelming?” he offers. She nods. “I can leave you be, if you want. I just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

“No,” she says quietly. “Stay.” Her throat bobs as she meets his eyes.

Her honesty gives him pause as he sees the longing so plainly on her face. For the first time since he returned to the ground, he feels like he actually sees her. Clarke, unmasked and real like they’d been with each other so long ago. He couldn’t turn it away even if he wanted to.

“Okay.”

He joins her at her perch on the rocks at the edge of the shoreline, taking a seat next to her on the cool stone. He shuffles their weapons around to make room, and something catches his attention as he moves to place hers to the side. The leather of her rifle’s strap is etched with names—so many names—each of them belonging to a person lost to the ground.

If she notices his attentiveness, she doesn’t say anything. It isn’t until his fingers trace over the name _Gina_ that she speaks.

“I’m sorry. I know it must be hard to think about her.”

“No,” he says quickly. “It’s nice. Honestly, I didn’t even realize you knew her.”

Clarke shakes her head.

“I didn’t.” She looks at him then, her eyes soft and sincere as a small smile appears on her lips. “But if you loved her, she had to be worth knowing.”

Something inside of him breaks a little bit, makes something he’d thought he’d dealt with a long time ago feel fresh and raw. Had he loved her? It seems strange to ask himself the same question he’d asked himself years ago so many times. He knows he’d wanted to, had wished he could love her the way someone like Gina deserved to be loved. And maybe he had, in his own way. But how do you give your heart to a person when someone else had left it in pieces just three months prior?

Bellamy shoves the thought away, locks it back in the box he keeps full of the things he knows he’ll never really have the chance to make up for. Clarke’s eyes are still on him, now curious as she reads the emotions he’s sure are in his own. She’s always been good at that—at reading him when no one else could.

After all this time, that seems to be one of the only things that hasn’t changed between them. So much has been stripped away. They’d been something to each other, before the world ended again. Something he told himself he’d let go of on the Ring but that he feels swelling in his chest at the understanding in her gaze.

He’s different now, he knows, no longer an inferno that sets himself ablaze for others without thinking of how it will burn the people he loves. But he supposes she is, too. The ice has thawed enough to leave her bare and exposed to the world—to Madi, he amends. And yet, though it’s made her vulnerable, this love she’s found for a child that’s seen as much loss as she has, he sees the strength it’s given her, too. Love looks good on Clarke, he decides, makes her powerful and fearless in her attempts to protect her people. This woman a far cry from the war-hardened girl he’d left behind six years ago.

He wonders if this is who she was before the world had stolen her from herself. Maybe this was the person Clarke was always supposed to be. The thought makes him smile.

“Wells is here, too,” he adds, eyeing the letters so carefully carved into the leather. He watches as surprise flickers across Clarke’s face, and then a grin. It’s not the grief he expects, but then again, he supposes she’s had years to grieve now. It’s not sadness, but a flash of some long-forgotten memory. She turns back to the lake, and before he can stop himself, he asks, “What was he like?”

She looks at him, brows furrowed.

“Before we came down here, I mean,” he clarifies.

She pauses for a minute, gaze returning to the water. The smile tugs at her lips again, her face growing soft.

“He was kind,” she says. “And generous. He used to trade his stuff—clothes, toys, anything—to get art supplies for me.” She’s thoughtful then, staring at the water with a look that makes his heart ache, her smile sad but genuine.

“He used to read to me to help me go to sleep. I’d beg him to go with me to the library on the Ark hours after curfew, always begging him to read ‘just one more page’ before he dragged me back to my quarters before we got in trouble.”

Bellamy chuckles in spite of himself and nods. It sounds about right.

“He played piano. On the simulators, at least, and he was really good. Sometimes he’d play this one song for me, the one I always told him sounded like bells ringing. He knew it was my favorite.”

Her voice halts for a moment, thick with emotion, before it resumes. She’s humming, something light and a little off-key, but it’s almost enough that he can picture a young Clarke sitting next to her best friend as he tapped away at the simulator. The song quiets after a moment, and he chances a glance at her. Her eyes are closed, a single tear track reflecting the moonlight off the fair skin of her cheek. After a moment, she speaks, her voice so soft he barely hears it above the sound of the water lapping at the shore.

“I think in another life, you would have been friends, too.”

It’s a nice thought. One that warms his insides and gives him a sense of calm he doesn’t remember feeling when thinking about the losses they’d been dealt on Earth. It strikes him then that her time spent here has taught him to cope with the dead, given her time to mourn and grieve that was never available to her during wartime. A part of him envies her for it, and shame licks at his ribcage as he reminds himself what she must have dealt with on her own for so long, with no one to protect and comfort her but a child.

“What are we going to do, Bellamy?” she whispers, her words breaking the stillness between them. “About the bunker? About Eligius?”

He hears it in her words, her fear of another war, of more death.

“I don’t know,” he answers honestly. “But we’ll figure it out together.”

And he knows it’s the truth. He knows that no matter what happens, no matter what the world decides to throw at them this time, he plans to face them all at her side sharing each other’s burdens the way they used to.

Together. The way it should have been all this time.


	3. to days unlived

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The fire is nearly out by the time they reach the clearing, its embers still flickering softly in the pile of ash that surrounds it. They stop at the edge of the cabins, a pregnant pause falling between them. She starts to tell him goodnight, but the smile he gives her is so soft it makes her stomach flip. The night is cool on her face, the kind of air that wakes you up and seems to sharpen every detail of sensation.
> 
> He’s close, so close. The breeze picks up and tosses a few tendrils of her hair across her face. Bellamy’s hands are there to push them behind her ear before she can even process it, his touch as tender as had been a lifetime ago. Her hands place themselves on his chest of their own accord, and he looks at her with eyes she’s only seen this gentle one other time, back when she’d told him about the inspiration that now thuds below her fingertips.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for such a long time between updates! I'm graduating college here in a few weeks and should hopefully have some time to be writing soon. This is a shorter chapter, but I figured it was better than making you wait for a longer one. Happy reading!

The silence. The stillness in the air but for the crunch of leaves beneath feet and the trees shifting in the breeze. The clarity of mind that comes with no interruptions, no white noise in the background. That’s what he’d missed most about being on the ground.

Aside from the woman that treks in front of him, of course, her steps so soft on the earth beneath them he can barely hear it.

“If we’re hunting, why didn’t you bring a bow?” Bellamy asks, his voice echoing off the trees that surround them. He can’t believe it’s only dawned on him just now after they’ve been hiking for nearly an hour with nothing but the rifles that clammer against their backs. Clarke is still wary of using them to hunt, both due to their limited supply of firepower and their desire to stay hidden.

“Because we’re not hunting,” she replies. He can hear her smile even with her back to him. “We’re foraging.” He groans internally. God, he hates foraging, the hours spent hunched over as he scours the ground for leaves he has no fucking idea how to identify. He knows Clarke remembers. She must understand his silence because she chuckles ahead of him. “I only told you that to get you to come.”

He rolls his eyes, muttering beneath his breath as they clamber over a fallen tree. Clarke’s ankle seems to have healed well in the weeks since Polis, her limp mostly gone but for a few rough steps on the uneven ground once in a while. He offers her his hand once he makes it over. She slips down on her own anyway and gives him a smirk.

“You know, if you wanted me to come with you,” he grumbles, “you could have just asked.”

She hums thoughtfully at that, grin still on her lips. They only make it a few steps before she stops suddenly and drops to her knees. He watches as she yanks a handful of leafy plants dotted with white flowers from the ground and grins up at him.

“Bittercress,” she says. “Madi hates them, but they’re not that bad. Good filler when the meat’s scarce.”

She clasps the bunch in her hand and dusts off her knees as she stands. She tugs the leaves down, stripping away the outer layer of the stem, and holds it in front of his nose. Bellamy stares at her skeptically.

“It won’t kill you,” she laughs. “Try it.”

He does, despite his reservations. It’s crisp like some of the wild onions she’d brought back to camp a week or two prior, and the taste, while sharp, isn’t entirely unpleasant.

“You’re right, it’s not bad,” he admits.

She beams and grabs him by the shoulder to turn him around. She works at the drawstring of the pack he’d insisted on carrying on his own back and pulls out a leather string she uses to tie around the stems of the bittercress. Then she shoves it into the pack, and she’s off again with him a few steps behind her.

They stay like that for a while, all soft smiles and heavy footsteps as they make their way in a wide circle around camp. Her eyes scan the ground as his scan the trees, hers searching to feed, his to protect. The sun is warm on the back of his neck, but he can feel the chill of the coming winter settle around them. It’s slow work, but it’s not as unpleasant as he’d remembered. From time to time she reaches down to pluck a stem or handful of leaves from the ground and spouts off a bunch of names he doesn’t remember. The sight of her satisfaction with her work makes him smile anyway. She offers a few times to take a turn carrying the pack, but he shakes his head. She always looks like she wants to argue, but she doesn’t. It surprises him.

It’s late afternoon when Clarke finds a cluster of purple flowers that puts a broad smile on her face. She’s grown chattier as the day progressed, telling him stories of her time on the ground and recounting days she’d spent with Madi, teaching her to read and draw and survive.

“These are Madi’s favorite,” she gasps as she kneels next to them. “I taught her how to crush them to make paint, but she goes through it so fast that we can never keep enough of them on hand. Honestly, I thought we’d picked them bare in this area.”

Her excitement is contagious, and he can feel a grin stretch across his face that mirrors hers. She sets to work picking the flowers as he scouts the trees around them. She keeps talking aboutMadi, tells him about how hard it had been to get her to stop painting long enough to do her lessons. Her voice is lighter than he can ever remember it being, and it puts a lightness in his own chest at the sound of Clarke actually _happy_.

Her breath catches suddenly, and his eyes snap to her. His eyes search her figure for signs of pain, but she’s crouched on the ground with her hands in the dirt.

“Shit,” she swears. He sees it then, the footprint embedded within the earth next to the greenery. “Eligius has been here.”

He crouches down beside her and eyes it warily.

“We don’t know it was Eligius,” Bellamy reasons. “It could have been one of us. Maybe Madi or Echo while they were hunting.”

Clarke shakes her head.

“It’s too deep to have been them.” She brushes her fingers against the track. “Not many of us are heavy enough to make a print like this—you, maybe Murphy. These are fresh and the treads don’t look like any of the boots I stockpiled for you guys.” She looks at him with fearful eyes. “This wasn’t us.”They’re not far from camp now, two miles out, maybe three. Close enough that it makes his stomach clench.“Bellamy, what if they found us? What if they know where camp is? They could be there right now—”

“Hey,” he says, placing a hand on her shoulder to steady her. “Breathe. For all we know, they still have no idea where we are. Let’s get back to camp and we’ll figure this out.”

Her eyes are wide with dread as she looks at him, like she’s begging him to give her another explanation.

“Madi,” she breathes. “We have to go. _Now_.”

She drops the flowers in her hands and takes off. She makes the hike back to camp so quickly it’s difficult for him to keep up, his lungs straining from disuse he still hasn’t shaken since returning to the ground. She has to slow for him once, and though she doesn’t complain, he can see the anxiety on her face. It’s not a long trek, but it seems to take hours as scenario after scenario plays in his mind, each worse than the last. By the time they clear the tree line at the edge of camp, fear grips his stomach like a vice.

They arrive at the clearing only to find everything as usual. Murphy and Harper are working on building more huts for the others once the bunker is opened. Clarke’s eyes lock on Madi, perched on a log near the fire pit and calmly whittling away at a piece of wood. He feels her exhale next to him.

Clarke calls out for Madi as they hasten to the center of camp. The others must hear the edge in her voice because they too gather around Bellamy and Clarke with eyes wide and alert. He doesn’t waste time with niceties before dropping the news on them.

“We have reason to believe that Eligius has been within a couple of miles of camp,” Bellamy says. “We don’t know if they know where we are or if they’ve found us, but they’ve definitely been in the area.”

He watches as Madi’s eyes flicker to Clarke. He can feel her next to him, tense with anxiety but trying not to startle Madi.

“As of right now, no one leaves this camp on their own,” Clarke says. “We’re going to be cutting back all trips beyond the tree line, hunting trips included. And Madi, you are not to leave this camp at all.”

Madi makes a noise of dissent.

“Winter is almost here,” she says. “We have to get more food stockpiled.”

“You and Echo have already managed to get us enough to survive,” Clarke says. “We’ll have to ration, but we’ll make do.”

He sees the irritation on Echo’s face, but she doesn’t say anything. Bellamy thinks she’s right, based on the amount of food he’d seen in the smokehouse yesterday. It wasn’t a lot, but it would get them through until they could figure out what else they were going to do.

“Clarke, you can’t just keep us all caged in here like animals,” Madi says. Her tone shifts dangerously, and he can see Clarke set her jaw from the corner of his eye. “If Echo and I need to hunt, we’re going to hunt.”

Bellamy steps forward to say something, but Clarke stops him with a hand on his chest.

“And when Eligius attacks you out there, or they follow you back to camp, what then?” she asks. “Do you think I’m going to allow that to happen? Do you want to be responsible for that?”

“Look,” Madi growls. “I know this isn’t a great situation, but I’m not just going to sit around camp all day like a child. I know these woods as well as you do, I can _help_ if you just—”

“Madi, this is not up for discussion. You’re staying here.”

“What, so now everyone else is back and suddenly that means you get to start bossing people around again?” Madi says. “I thought you told me you hated being in charge, but from where I’m standing you look pretty damn happy about it to me.”

“ _Language_ —”

“We can’t just wait here for Eligius to find us like sitting ducks. We have to—”

“ _You_ are not doing anything,” Clarke says. Her voice grows louder with each word.

“You can’t force me to stay here.”

“I can, and I will.”

You’re not my _mom_ , Clarke!”

Clarke recoils like she’s been slapped. The group is so silent that Bellamy can hear the leaves of the trees on the outskirts of camp shifting in the soft breeze. The others look at the ground, across camp, at anything but the scene playing out in front of them as they rock nervously on their feet.

“I may not be your mom,” Clarke says lowly, “but my job is to keep you safe. And that’s what I’m going to do, whether you like it or not.”

Madi stares hard at her, fury boiling beneath her gaze. Clarke doesn’t back down, simply looks at her for a moment longer and says, “You’re on meal prep duty. Indefinitely.”

Madi huffs and turns on her heel, striding across camp faster than Bellamy thought possible for someone her size. He turns to Clarke, who stares blankly at the ground beneath them. The others are heading back to their tasks, doing their best to ignore the confrontation to give Clarke some privacy in a place where privacy is impossible. Bellamy steps toward her.

“Clarke—”

“I’m going to start rationing,” she says softly.

She turns as quickly as Madi had, but her posture is resigned as she walks away from him. She doesn’t look back.

 

 

He finds her in her cabin, a ball of what looks to be wool beside her as her fingers tangle it into shape with the help of two carved needles.

“What are you doing?” he asks.

She startles as though she hadn’t heard him coming and looks up at him tiredly. She only glances at him for a moment before returning to what she was doing, her fingers twisting the yarn into place with a force he knows probably isn’t necessary.

“I’m stress knitting,” she bites out as she winds another loop around her fingers. “Winter will be here before long, and we’re all going to need to keep warm.”

Bellamy crosses the room and takes a seat beside her as he looks around at her quarters. Hers are just like his in size, but her time here has given her the chance to make it a bit cozier. Sketches line the wooden walls over both her and Madi’s beds. He spots a bundle of dried flowers woven into a wreath above the doorway. They’ve made a home here, the two of them. He can picture it: the two of them coming back from a long day of working around camp or hunting, spending a few hours by firelight chatting and telling stories before they fell asleep.

“I’m sorry about what happened today,” Bellamy says. “With Madi.”

Clarke shrugs.

“I get it,” she says. “She’s been cooped up here with no one but me for six years. It makes sense that she wants to branch out and have some more freedom.”

He nods but doesn’t speak, giving her the time she needs to get the words out he knows are waiting.

“I just don’t think she completely grasps how dangerous this situation is, you know?” Bellamy doesn’t know if she’s talking to him or herself, but he lets her continue. “She’s been safe for so long, grew up with no one else to worry about but us. And now there's a ship full of criminals here who we don’t know anything about, and she just wants to go wandering in the woods with Echo. It’s not safe. And I have to be the one to teach her that.”

He sees her jaw set determinedly, the fading sunlight that peeks through the window reflecting off her cheekbones.

“You know when we first came down here,” Bellamy says, “on a different ship full of criminals, might I add—Octavia was the same way.” He feels Clarke let out a breath beside him. “She’d spent her entire life under the floor with no one but me and my mom, and suddenly she had this whole world opened up to her. And all I wanted to do was keep her safe.”

He lets out a heavy breath and runs his hand through his hair.

“I did a lot of stupid things to protect her—even kept her locked in the fucking dropship for a while.” Clarke chuckles beside him. He smiles and says, “More often than not, she hated me for it. But in all honesty, I’d do it again if it meant keeping her safe.”

He looks at her, his eyes trailing over her curls that glow with the evening sun. She’s still beside him, staring at the needles in her hands with eyes that don’t really focus on them.

“You’re making the right call here, Clarke,” he tells her. “Even if Madi doesn’t see it right now.”

He sees some of the strain alleviate from her posture at his words, and it hits him how much weight she puts on his opinion. It had been what she’d needed, to hear him tell her he thought she was doing the right thing, and the realization settles in his stomach heavily. They sit in tense silence as though Clarke’s thoughts have taken the same turn, the air between them is still and waiting for one of them to say something.

He clears his throat.

“I didn’t know you knew how to knit,” he says with a nod toward the wool that rests in her lap. She shrugs next to him as she takes up her work again. He watches for a moment, the easy rhythm with which she hooks the wooden needles into the strands and pulls them through in a practiced motion. “Did Madi teach you that?”

She shakes her head.

“My mom,” she corrects. “When I’d outgrow sweaters on the Ark, she’d unravel them and rework the yarn into something that fit.”

So even the privileged in space had to make it by with the same scraps for clothes he’d had. It surprises him.

“Even Alpha station shared based on need,” she explains as though she’d known the direction his thoughts had gone. “Only so much clothing to go around. So my mom knit me and my dad new sweaters, and somewhere along the way I picked it up, too.”

He hears the sadness creep into her voice, the lilt that appears as she talks about the time with her family. As horrible as it is, sometimes he forgets that he’s not the only one with family trapped underground.

“I know you miss her,” he says.

She nods but doesn’t say anything, her eyes fixed on her fingers working the wool. He sees the tension in her shoulders, the stiffness in her spine as she works, and it tugs at his stomach.

“It’s no one’s fault,” he tells her. “That we can’t get the bunker open, I mean. It’s not your fault, Clarke.”

She stills then, setting the woven fabric into her lap, and heaves a tired sigh as her eyes flicker shut. She leans forward to rest her elbows against her knees.

“Raven gave me one job to do while we were in Polis,” she says. “She could have saved them all, and all I had to do was that one thing. And I couldn’t do it. I know this territory, I know those storms, I know how fast they can shift to black rain. The second I saw those clouds on the horizon, I should have—”

“You couldn’t have known,” he says. He only hesitates for a moment before he rests a hand on her forearm. She looks at him dejectedly, her eyes brimming with defeat, and all he wants is to wipe that look from her face forever.

He moves from his seat next to her to crouch in front of her, taking her hands in his as she moves her gaze to stare hard at the floor.

“Clarke, look at me,” he says. It takes a moment, but she does. Her eyes glisten with unshed tears. “It’s not your fault. None of this is your fault.”

She looks at him like she’s trying to figure out if he really believes it, so he gives her hand a gentle squeeze. Her lip trembles, but she doesn’t cry. He gives her a small smile and stands to offer her his hand.

“Come on,” he insists. “It’s getting dark, and we’ve got a fire to build.”

She takes a shaky breath, and Bellamy sees the corners of her mouth turn upwards as she takes his hand.

“You think Monty’s bringing moonshine?” she asks.

“Of course he is.”

“Good.”

* * *

 

After the first one, nightly bonfires become somewhat of a routine with the group. When the day’s tasks are done, they convene around the fire and discuss the day’s events, things left to do, how the hell they’re going to get the bunker open.

They’ve made no real progress on the last of these topics, and Clarke can see Bellamy growing more restless with every passing day. The strain of waiting is visible as he presses Raven about her progress until she snaps at him and reminds him she’s only one person. Clarke understands better than anyone that not knowing whether the person you care about most is alive or dead can be worse than the grief of actually mourning them. It’s enough to soften her response when Bellamy inevitably snaps at her, too.

Eventually, when she sees Bellamy’s composure begin to fray at the edges, she sends Madi to bed, much to her protests. After the day’s events, she hadn’t said a word tonight before stalking off to their cabin. Once she’s gone, Monty brings out the moonshine, courtesy of the still he’s installed at the edge of the clearing. How he managed to ferment such potent alcohol in such a short amount of time, she’ll never know. She chalks it up to the motivation of being drunk enough to forget what a shitshow the planet has become.

The company is nice, but six years of near solitude has formed hard habits to break. When the buzz of the moonshine kicks in and the voices around the fire get a little too loud, she slips away to her perch at the edge of the lake. She knows without looking back that Bellamy will follow shortly after. That’s become a bit of a routine, too, she supposes.

Tonight he brings a canteen of Monty’s moonshine along with him, his laughter easy to come by as he fills Clarke’s tin cup.

“So I have to know,” he says, the alcohol seeping into his words and making them run together a bit, “how the hell did you stay entertained down here all this time? I mean, don’t get me wrong, Madi’s great, but you still had to be bored out of your fucking mind.”

She lets out a breathy laugh, one filled with a lightness she hasn’t felt in a long time—maybe not since she’d first set foot on Earth. He smiles back at her.

“There was always something to be done around here,” she tells him. “Something that needed fixing, hunting to be done…whatever. But there was a lot of downtime, too.” He nods as if he understands, and she can only imagine how much time he’d fought to fill up on the ring. “I drew a lot. All the time, practically. I taught Madi how, and some days when it was too hot to do anything else or if we were just looking for something to do, we’d sit in the clearing outside of camp and do it together.”

For a brief moment, there’s a sadness in his eyes she doesn’t expect or understand. For just that second, something like pain flits across his face, a grimace that’s gone as quickly as it appeared. He nods, returns her smile, though it doesn’t meet his eyes.

She’s quiet for a moment to give him time to explain if he wants to. When he doesn’t, she continues, “Anyway, it just sort of became a ritual. I started carrying my sketchbook around everywhere with me, just in case the light hit the trees just right or if I saw something interesting.”

The corners of his mouth tip upwards slightly, and after a moment’s hesitation, he nods toward the pack that rests at her side.

“Do you have it with you now?”

The alcohol is warm in her veins as she reaches for her bag and fumbles for the feel of the worn leather beneath her fingertips. She pulls it from her pack.

“Can I, uh…” he hesitates and clears his throat. “Can I see it?”

She thinks about the contents of that book, the pages she’d poured her heart into for six years. And the thing is, if it were anyone else, she might have said no. But maybe it’s the energy in the air that settles in the air between them, or the moonshine that thrums through her limbs, or maybe it’s just the fact that it’s Bellamy, right in front of her, whole and real and _here_. She doesn’t know if she’ll ever get used to that. Whatever the reason, she nods and hands him the book.

His hands graze the cover reverently, his touch gentle as he opens it and begins to flip through its pages. There are dozens of sketches there, maybe even hundreds, she’s lost count. Some are of the group, some happy, some frustrated and scared like they’d been the last day they’d been together. There are portraits, too, one of Octavia that gives him pause. But most are of Bellamy, of him smiling, of him angry. There’s one of the way he’d looked at her that last day, back in Becca’s lab when he’d pleaded with her to have hope. That one was special to her. That was the one she looked at on the hard days when nothing seemed to be going right, when the radiation sickness was awful or there was no food to be found. She looked at his face, the light she’d seen in his eyes, and it was always enough for her to know that she wouldn’t give up. She couldn’t.

She wants to say she hadn’t realized how often she’d drawn him, but it would be a lie. He’d always been her favorite subject, with cheekbones that cast shadows in ways most didn’t and a jawline she could always get right on the first try. Drawing him, too, had become somewhat of a ritual, she supposes, one that made sure she didn’t forget the freckles that dotted his skin or the gentleness in his eyes when he looked at her. It had gotten harder as time went on, but she’d never forgotten. Not really.

Bellamy is quiet as he flips through all of them, and every second that ticks by makes Clarke more anxious, even as the moonshine softens its sharpness.

“You know what they say,” he teases at last. When he turns to her, his smile is genuine this time, wide and bright even in the moonlight. “Absence makes the heart grow fonder.”

Clarke snorts.

“That’s a load of crap.” She feels the slur in her words, winces as she tallies up how many drinks she’s had. She’s lost her tolerance after six years of sobriety. She searches for a glimpse of her and Madi’s cabin through the treeline, long dark since Madi went to bed. When she turns back to the water, she feels Bellamy’s eyes on her. She meets his gaze, his eyes soft—longing, she registers through the haze in her mind.

“I just mean,” she says, clearing her throat, “that maybe absence just helps you realize how fond you already were.”

Bellamy hums contentedly in response, and she makes a note to store the sound in the back of her mind. The sound of Bellamy happy.

They don’t say anything for a while, finding the comfortable silence they’d once shared regularly, now for the first time since he returned to the ground. The water laps at the rocks perched at the shoreline, the sound occasionally interrupted by the turning of a page by Bellamy’s hands. It’s enough that Clarke allows herself to focus on nothing but the feeling of the cool stone beneath her, the smell of woodsmoke on their clothing, and the warmth of Bellamy’s shoulder resting against hers.

“Do you ever miss the Ark?” she finds herself asking. “I mean, the way things were before we came down in the dropship?”

“No,” he says without hesitation.

She feels the tension her question creates in his frame. She tests the waters, tries to lighten the mood with a joke.

“Oh come on, you don’t miss getting to tote around your shock baton like a good little cadet?”

He doesn’t laugh. Instead, he says, “Once Octavia was arrested and they floated my mother, they stripped me of my cadet title. Job reassignment, new quarters, everything. I spent the year before we came down as a janitor.”

Shit. Not the direction she was hoping for this conversation to go. She thinks about Bellamy cleaning the floors of the Ark in the gray jumpsuits the custodial staff was forced to wear. The picture doesn’t make sense to her brain.

“Well, I did see your quarters back in Arkadia,” she tries again. She hopes her voice is light. “That’s probably the perfect job for a neat freak like you.”

He chuckles softly beside her, and it tugs at the corners of her lips until she can’t hold back herown grin. Curiosity gets the better of her.

“Did you miss it?” she asks. “Being in the guard?”

He takes a deep breath, seeming to contemplate his answer.

“Honestly, not as much as I probably should have.”

It’s not the answer she was expecting. She looks at him then, sees the moonlight glowing on his cheekbones. The lines that scatter around his eyes and mouth are just visible in the darkness. She wonders how long after Praimfaya it had taken him to smile enough to form them.

“I always _hated_ cadet training,” Bellamy hisses with a wry grin.

“Really?” Clarke chuckles, her cheeks warming at the sight of his smile mixed with the moonshine that’s starting to hum in her system. She feels the years without alcohol, the way it allows her buzz to creep up on her. “What, didn’t like having to take orders from authority figures?”

Bellamy snorts, and Clarke nudges him with her shoulder. “I’d have thought you were born with a gun in your hand, the way you cart yours around like a teddy bear down here.”

He rolls his eyes.

“I never wanted to be a member of the guard,” he says. It surprises her. “My mom got me into it. Said it would help keep Octavia safe to know when surprise inspections would be coming. I agreed to it so my mom wouldn’t have to keep calling in…favors, with the guards.”

She sees the way his expression darkens and feels it tug at her chest. It doesn’t come as a shock that he agreed to sacrifice one of the few choices a person had on the Ark to protect his sister, even if it meant committing his life to something he hated. She wonders when it started—this pathological need to sacrifice his own happiness for those around him. It’s something she’s had a lot of time to think about over the last six years, why he’d risked his own safety to shield Charlotte from a mob of angry delinquents, why he’d come back with her after the day trip to the bunker. He could have left. He didn’t owe them anything. But she supposes that a lifetime of abnegation makes it a habit, and maybe Bellamy was just habitually self-sacrificial.

“What would you have been?” Clarke asks after a long moment. “If you’d had the choice?”

He doesn’t answer for a moment. He stares out at the water in front of them before he turns his gaze to her face. He studies her for a moment, eyes searching for something he must find, because he says, “I don’t know. A teacher, maybe.”

“What would you have taught?”

“History, probably. Maybe literature.”

She hums thoughtfully, and yes, she can see Bellamy spending his days surrounded by children, telling ancient stories of a world they were never supposed to see.

“You’d have been a medic, right?” he asks.

“Probably. It wasn’t always my favorite thing to do, but I was good at it, and the Ark needed more of them than what we had.”

Bellamy seems to consider this, brows furrowed as he looks at her.

“What was your favorite thing to do?”

She gives him a small smile and gestures to the book that still sits in his hands.

“I always thought that if I’d lived before the bombs dropped, I’d have been an artist,” she says. “But you know how it was on the Ark. If it didn’t serve a purpose, it wasn’t a necessity.”

He doesn’t answer for a moment, seeming to weigh something in his mind. She watches his jaw tick, and her chest tightens painfully as she thinks about how familiar the sight is, how long it’s been since she’s seen it.

“It served a purpose,” he says quietly.

The words puzzle her, and the way he looks at her, like just the sight of her is a tether, a lifeline he’s clinging to is just a _lot_. It swallows her, leaving her wondering not for the first time how she made it this far without him.

“Back on the Ring,” he clarifies, clearing his throat, “there were days that just felt so…empty, I guess. Sometimes it felt like space was just closing in on us.”

She nods, remembering those first years before she’d found Madi, the way she could feel the sky pressing down on her. It was like the night was smothering her, suffocating in a way that only the weight of the world could be. She remembers staring at the stars, one ever so slightly brighter than the rest. _Come back_ , she’d begged. _Please come back_.

“The panic attacks started about a month after we reached the Ark,” he said. It feels like a blow to her chest, sucking the breath from her lungs. The words sober her, the soft hum that’s been flowing through her body for the past hour abating almost instantly. His words, too, are clear when he continues.

“I think it was the noise. Like, a buzzing in your head you just can’t get to quit—the Ark hummed all the fucking time. And then one day Raven and I were looking for scrap metal and I found my way into the old Skybox.”

She hears the change in the tone of his voice, feels it turning in the pit of her stomach.

“And I found this cell,” he continues, “One bed, no windows. But the walls were lined with these drawings and I just—I _knew_ , you know? I knew it was yours.”

She nods.

“Anyway, you were right. What you told me that day you’d given me the Mount Weather map. It was the one place on the Ark quiet enough to calm me down. At some point, it stopped being a way to manage my anxiety and started to be somewhere I could go to think.”

His hands are clenched into fists in his lap, his eyes resolutely on the lake. He doesn’t look at her, but he doesn’t need to for her to know the sadness that’s there.

“It was a necessity for _me_ ,” he says, and his voice breaks with it.

She doesn’t feel the tears in her eyes until they spill onto her cheeks, and she swipes at them stubbornly. The sketches that had lined the walls of her cell had been such a part of her, a way of pouring out all of the loneliness she’d felt during the months of isolation. Her pain, her anger, her _soul_ had been laced with each stroke of her charcoal. The idea that Bellamy had spent years surrounded by them, clinging to them like a lifeline the same way she had, somehow chills her bones and warms her chest until she feels like she might combust.

Clarke’s head drops to his shoulder beside her. She feels him tense, and her heart thuds heavily beneath her ribs. Before she can recoil, she feels his body soften, his arm snaking up over her back to tug her closer to him. She obliges, his hand resting heavily on her waist, a weight that grounds her to their spot on the shoreline. It’s been so long, she’s almost forgotten what it feels like to be touched like this. To feel protected.

 _Safe_ , she realizes. He still makes her feel safe. It makes her smile.

“I radioed you,” she says. She doesn’t know what makes the words fall from her lips, if it’s the comfortable silence or the warmth of his arm against her back or the smell that is so distinctly Bellamy that seems to surround her in every direction. “Every day. I know Madi already told you about that but…” she trails off, focusing intently on the sight of her fingers picking at the stone beneath them. “I missed you. More than I can probably ever tell you.”

She lets herself look at him then, sees the way the moonlight glints off the tear tracks on his cheek that she knows mirror her own. She buries her face back into his shoulder, inhaling the scent that radiates from his shirt, worn thin over the years. If he feels the press of her lips against his sleeve, he doesn’t say anything, only moves his hand from her waist to her elbow before trailing it up and down her arm.

She doesn’t know how long they stay like that, but by the time he stands and takes her hand to help her up, her toes have gone cold and her knees are sore from disuse. His arm finds its way back to her waist on the trek back to camp, warm and solid in a way that makes the darkness around them not feel so intimidating. The fire is nearly out by the time they reach the clearing, its embers still flickering softly in the pile of ash that surrounds it.

They stop at the edge of the cabins, a pregnant pause falling between them.

She starts to tell him goodnight, but the smile he gives her is so soft it makes her stomach flip. The night is cool on her face, the kind of air that wakes you up and seems to sharpen every detail of sensation.

He’s close, so close. The breeze picks up and tosses a few tendrils of her hair across her face. Bellamy’s hands are there to push them behind her ear before she can even process it, his touch as tender as had been a lifetime ago. Her hands place themselves on his chest of their own accord, and he looks at her with eyes she’s only seen this gentle one other time, back when she’d told him about the inspiration that now thuds below her fingertips.

Before she realizes what she’s doing, she’s closing the gap between them. His eyes widen as she brings a calloused hand to his cheek, lips parting as she trails her thumb across the line of his jaw. She leans forward and onto her toes, and she swears that the incessant sound of the crickets and the trees and the wind silences as they find themselves inches apart. She feels his breath on her cheek, his nose brushing against hers, the world around them frozen as she watches his eyes flutter shut, as though this moment is too sacred for human eyes to witness.

She presses her lips to his softly, barely a brush of contact before he slides his hand over her waist as she grapples for purchase at the back of his neck. Her fingers weave into his hair as she pulls him closer, tugging him into her to deepen the kiss. He obliges, his hand sliding from her waist to her other cheek, framing her face between his palms as though letting go will mean this moment never existed.

They’re both breathless when he pulls away, finally, begrudgingly, their breaths warm against the rapidly cooling air. He tilts his forehead down to hers and tilts her chin up to meet his gaze. His eyes are bright and alert, but soft with something that makes her head spin. He’s here, so warm and solid beneath her touch, and for a moment, all she wants to ask him to do is _stay, please stay_.

But she remembers that Madi rests on the other side of the door, remembers the fact that six years is a long time, remembers the danger that lurks on the other side of the tree line and that there is so much that rests on their shoulders that this isn’t an option for them right now. She pulls away.

His face is resigned, like he already knows the turn her thoughts have taken. Maybe his have done the same.

“I should go,” he breathes.

She nods, folding her arms in front of her chest. The air that fills the air between them is cold against her flushed skin. Too cold.

“Goodnight, Bellamy,” she says.

He looks at her for a moment, just long enough for her to see the sadness that settles on his face.

“‘Night, Princess.”

He turns and makes the short walk to his cabin across the camp, her eyes following him the whole way. He pauses in his doorway as though he wants to look back, and despite her best efforts not to she hopes that he will. But he must think better of it, because he disappears into the hut without a second glance.

When Clarke slips beneath her blankets, the bed feels a little colder, a little emptier than usual despite the fact that Madi hasn’t slept in the same bed as her in years. She tucks the furs up to her chin and tries to settle in, ignoring the voice that shouts from the back of her mind to do something stupid, something that just isn’t possible.


End file.
